A novice priest of Huitzilopochtli and the Emperor’s least warlike (and therefore least favored) brother are as far apart as an ant is from the moon, but now a priestess has gone missing and it’s not as though Ciquacen Acatl can ignore that, not when everything he sees in the stars says a great calamity is coming, so off he goes to the calmecac to find someone who might know more than the useless scraps of gossip he’s picked up from his brothers. He doesn’t find anything so useful as an eyewitness, of course, but when Ceyaxochitl hears he’s on the case she bids him wait while she fetches someone she insists will want to help.

“This,” she tells him as she ushers in a young priest, “is Teomitl. He’s swearing there’s been foul play and we’ve arrested an innocent man.”

“You have,” the boy snaps. He can’t be more than eighteen, proud in the way of the young, and he barely bows at all to Acatl-tzin. “My lord,”--the respect is honest enough, at least--”I saw Elueia before her disappearance, and I don’t think the Jaguar Knight came to kill her. Not with the way she was acting.”

He gestures for someone to bring him paper and ink and a reed pen. He’ll want to take notes. “Tell me everything you saw.”